Michael Yuan

It is not an everyday event that an object in our cosmic neighborhood suddenly brightens by 1 million times and bloat itself up to 100 times the size of earth. Well, that is exactly what happened to Comet Holmes in the past week. It is an one of those rare opportunities for see a very bright comet with naked eyes!

The best way to view Comet Holmes is through a binocular. The small one you use for sports events and opera should be enough. The comet looks like a yellow-ish star from naked eyes, but when viewed through a binocular, it is a fuzzy yellow ball in stark contrast to the “real” stars close by. I personally use a 7×50 field binocular and it gave a fantastic view of the comet.

The easiest way to find the comet is as follows:

* Stand face North at night (2-3 hours after sunset) in a clear field, and look at the sky to the north east direction.

* Locate the constellation Cassiopeia — it is a group of stars forming a W shape. It is really easy to spot. The size of the W is about the size of your fist extended at arm’s length. Notice that the W is probably rotated.

* From the W looking East (if you can see the milky way, just follow the milky way east), you will see a very bright yellow star. The yellow star is called Capella and it is one of the most bright stars in the entire sky. The distance between the W and Capella is about 3 fists at full extend of the arm.

* Now, half way between the W and Capella is the constellation Perseus. It is also in the milky way. The brightest star of Perseus is called Mirfak. Mirfak forms a small triangle with two other stars. The yellow star in that triangle is Comet Holmes. To confirm, point your binocular to the triangle, you should see that Mirfak is a point-like star, while the comet is a yellow-ish fuzzy ball of light.

Sky and Telescope magazine has a real nice figure showing the relative positions of things (go to the article to see a larger version of the image).

Have fun star gazing!